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Releasing previews or trailers of films is a promotional practice that began in early cinema to enthuse different audiences about a new attraction. When trailers were first established, they featured multiple modes of construction (clip, montage of clips, sample, symbolization, etc.) before this was reduced preferentially to two: the clip and the montage of clips. Using a number of rhetorical devices, it displays its double promotional and paratextual purpose. At the same time, the conceptual and formal invention allows it to find a point of completion as both a meta-text and a programmatic form. Since the 2000s, other socio-professional domains (culture, politics, or even events) have imported trailers as a promotional template. However, in this migration, it is presumptuous, if not erroneous, to think that we are dealing with a form devoid of substance or one that uses ready-made content, independent of context. The trailer is perceived differently according to the genres of discourse it echoes, the values and symbolic objects in circulation (history, ideas, political adhesion, mobilization for events, etc.), and the purpose or the aesthetics aimed at. Moreover, points of friction appear. They occur when the trailer turns out to be the gateway to a larger enterprise or when the paratextual function becomes obsolete. In parallel, the dissemination of the trailer intersects with the rise of a movement that can be called an announcement culture.